Sir Richard Charles Scrimgeour Shepherd (6 December 1942 – 19 February 2022) was a British politician who was Member of Parliament for Aldridge-Brownhills from 1979 to 2015.

A Eurosceptic, Shepherd was one of the Maastricht Rebels that had the whip withdrawn over opposition to Prime Minister John Major's legislation on the European Union.

Shepherd was also a libertarian Conservative,[1] and had a three line whip imposed against him by Margaret Thatcher when he introduced an amendment to loosen the Official Secrets Act 1911.

He subsequently attended the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in the United States from which he graduated with an MSc which was also in Economics.

[7] Shepherd stood to be Speaker of the House of Commons in 2000, and won 136 votes: the third-closest to defeating Michael Martin of eleven opponents.

[8] He voted against the Cameron–Clegg coalition government in 2013 on the issue of British military intervention in the Syrian civil war.